paradoxical as it might seem, cool-headed and conscientious rulers of the
Church thought themselves on occasion called upon to restrain rather than
to stimulate the religious ardour of the multitude--fed as the flame was
by very various materials. Perhaps no more characteristic narrative has
come down to us from the age of the Poet of the "Canterbury Tales," than
the story of Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Sudbury and the Canterbury
Pilgrims. In the year 1370 the land was agitated through its length and
breadth, on the occasion of the fourth jubilee of the national saint,
Thomas the Martyr. The pilgrims were streaming in numbers along the
familiar Kentish road, when, on the very vigil of the feast, one of their
companies was accidentally met by the Bishop of London. They demanded his
blessing; but to their astonishment and indignation he seized the occasion
to read a lesson to the crowd on the uselessness to unrepentant sinners of
the plenary indulgences, for the sake of which they were wending their way
to the Martyr's shrine. The rage of the multitude found a mouthpiece in a
soldier, who loudly upbraided the Bishop for stirring up the people
against St. Thomas, and warned him that a shameful death would befall him
in consequence. The multitude shouted Amen--and one is left to wonder
whether any of the pious pilgrims who resented Bishop Sudbury's manly
truthfulness, swelled the mob which eleven years later butchered "the
plunderer" as it called him, "of the Commons." It is such glimpses as
this which show us how important the Church had become towards the people.
Worse was to ensue before the better came; in the meantime, the nation was
in that stage of its existence when the innocence of the child was fast
losing itself, without the self-control of the man having yet taken its
place.

But the heart of England was sound the while. The national spirit of
enterprise was not dead in any class, from knight to shipman; and
faithfulness and chastity in woman were still esteemed the highest though